


burn sky until you see lines

by solikerez



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, han and chewie definitely took cross-country road trips in the falcon, jk he does it because that's how his mother taught him, kylo ren writes letters instead of emails bc he's a pretentious bastard, modern au where ben screws up things with his family and tries to get back on his feet, rey is an artist pass it on, so basically nothing has changed, this was so close to being 2187 words gdi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 15:22:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7981405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solikerez/pseuds/solikerez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He writes a letter for every time he feels like the world is shattering around him, and it is still not enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn sky until you see lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eruanna_took](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruanna_took/gifts).



> This is dedicated to the lovely eruanna_took, happy birthday!

He writes a letter for every time he feels like the world is shattering around him, and it is still not enough.

He threw away both his future and his past long ago, too afraid to return to the mother he shunned and the father whose memory stays at the forefront of his mind whenever the lights go out and there is nothing else to distract him. Kylo threw away his real name along with them, destroying the boy called Ben Solo the moment he turned the key in the ignition of his father’s YT-model Falcon and drove until there was nothing but highway and streaked skies ahead of him.

(Despite all of their problems, he had the car transported back to his mother within a week. Something about taking something so dear to his father’s heart away from her while she was still grieving put a lump in his throat, and in a lapse of willpower, he sent it back with a post-it note on the front seat, with only two words scrawled across the paper: _Kylo Ren_.)

He doesn’t know where the name came from, really. Perhaps it had come into existence on one of his many nights spent with the haze of drunkenness falling over his mind and the unmistakable stench of alcohol on his breath. Or maybe it was Snoke who had come up with it when they first met on the seedy end of town, with the too-expensive suit and that twisted scar spanning his features and giving off the impression of a man who knows things, the type of things only told in whispers in the dark. The details fade, but none of it matters now, anyway. All that matters is that he is now Kylo Ren, and that is all there is to it.

That’s what he tells himself.

But there are still crumpled letters on the floor and tears burning his eyes as he fights them with a vigor which is quickly fading, and there are still days when he mourns for all that he has lost. But most of all, he mourns for Ben Solo, the boy lost to the world and to him.

+++

There’s a particularly nasty spot of mold growing in his kitchen sink and his door hinges are squeaking and the cursor is blinking mockingly on a blank document on his computer screen, and Kylo Ren thinks that perhaps, this is the perfect metaphor for his life at the moment.

It’s been a month since he stormed out of his office at the First Order, nearly grinding his teeth into dust as he gathered up his belongings and his fragile pride and threw a highly inappropriate gesture up at his insufferable former partner, Armitage Hux, on the way out. It had taken him years to muster up the courage to crawl out from under Snoke’s controlling finger and finally quit, but the blow was harsh. Snoke cut him off, not even offering Kylo so much as a final paycheck, and the prospect of meeting Snoke again frightens him too much to even think about debating the issue. Hell would ice over before Kylo would willingly step foot in the same room as that man again. His pride and his nerves would not allow it.

But rent is due in a week, and he is _not_ going to call his mother for the first time in years begging for rent money.

Instead, he picks himself up off of his sorry ass with an enthusiasm and determination he hasn’t had since he was knee high to his great-great-uncle Yoda and cleans the spot of mold from his kitchen sink.

+++

He’s walking back home from his second day on the job- as a radar technician, of all things, with a very bossy superviser, but hey, it pays- when he spots his dad’s old YT-model Falcon parked outside of the local mechanic’s shop. It nearly knocks all of the air out of him, seeing that car again, and it takes all of his resolve not to flee the scene in fear that his mother may pop out of the shop at any moment, eyes plagued with such a look of misery and disappointment that he cannot look away. But instead, he stays, frozen in place with his mouth agape when a girl with sun-kissed skin and dark hair tied up into three odd little buns bounds out of the shop with a satisfied smile glowing on her face and makes a beeline for the car. He shouts before he can even stop himself.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing with that car?”

“I’m taking _my_ car to my home, if you’ll excuse me,” she practically growls at him, dropping the smile and whipping her head around so quickly that Kylo is surprised she doesn’t get whiplash. She doesn’t sound like she’s from around here, either, which puts him off.

“That’s not yours, it used to belong to Han Solo! See? That dent right there, it’s from when my Uncle Chewie was trying to teach me how to ride a bike and I rode straight into it. There’s a scratch from it too, if you look closely enough.” He knows he doesn’t deserve to be smiling at the memory, with all he put his family through, but it creeps onto his face anyway. He feels ashamed, and quickly assumes the hardened glare from before.

The girl is silent, a far-off look in her eyes as her brow creases. “You knew Han?”

“Yeah, I knew him,” he says, and he catches himself before he can think about all the letters he’d written to his father after he died, in hopes that maybe writing his regret on paper would somehow help to alleviate the pain he felt every time he passed a mirror and saw a little bit of Han in his face. He knew Han Solo. He knew how his father liked to cheat whenever they played cards, how he constantly attempted to haggle with cashiers at the supermarket, how he’d spent years trying and failing to woo Leia Organa, his future wife and Kylo’s- no, _Ben’s_ mother, how he and Uncle Chewie were always away in that old, banged up, garbage heap of a car which served them well for years on end. Yes, he knew Han Solo. That is the name that keeps him up at night.

When he looks up, the girl is staring up at him, and he’s jolted back into the present again. “Sorry, yes, I knew him. He-” A shaky breath and an even shakier smile. “He was my father.”

“Oh.” She withdraws from him a little bit then, a shade of hesitance falling over her face. “He talked about you a lot, when I knew him,” she says, and Kylo can tell that she’s walking on eggshells around him now, careful not to upset him.

“When did you know him?”

“When I was seventeen, about to turn eighteen in a couple days. I was- well, I was running away. From my foster parents. I could have just waited until I turned eighteen but I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I packed up what belonged to me and ran. I didn’t get very far, truthfully. It took me until I was halfway up the interstate until I realized I had no idea where I was going to go, or where I was going to eat or sleep or anything.”

She takes a seat on the hood of the car and Kylo instinctively winces; his father used to shout at him for doing that. But she’s so wrapped up in her story that she doesn’t notice how her feet gently knock the bumper every time she swings her legs, and he doesn’t have it in him to tell her to stop. He has no right to, anyway. Instead, he joins her.

“I don’t really like to admit it, but I was really stuck, and I had no idea what to do. So there I was, sat on the side of the road in the middle of the night, clutching a stupid doll I made when I was six and my rucksack, which was almost entirely empty, and then I see this car going down the road at a speed which is definitely illegal, and I do something entirely stupid. I go out into the road, and I stand there until the car stops.”

“Did you have a death wish or something? The Falcon stops for no one.”

(He remembers the story his father told him one day after his parents had a fight. “You wanna know a secret Ben? The first time I met your mother, she was there on a street corner, and there was some prick bothering her and asking her if she wouldn’t mind losing those nice clothes of hers. Chewie and I were stopped at a light and he pointed out what was going on. I stepped out of that car and knocked the lights out of that guy, and gave your mother a ride. I asked her where she wanted to go and she just told me to keep driving, so I did. We drove until the sun came out. I always used to say that it would just be me and Chewie till the end, and that the Falcon would stop for nobody. But then your mother came along, and now the Falcon stops for nobody but her. I know I’m an asshole, and I know for sure your mother knows it too. But I will always love your mother, and that’s not going to change any time soon, kid.” Ben didn’t dream about his parents fighting that night. He dreamed about driving the Falcon on an open road, nothing but highway and streaked skies ahead of him.)

“Truthfully? I don’t know. But the car stopped and out came Han, grumbling and muttering under his breath, but he came out to meet me. We talked, and he let me hitch a ride with him.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to get into cars with strangers?” he asked, bewildered at the strange girl who stands in the street and hitches rides with people she doesn’t know.

“No. But I was lucky. Han was kind to me, and so were Leia and Chewie. They practically took me in, introduced me to some people I am lucky to call friends, and helped me get onto my feet. I can never repay them for everything they’ve done for me. And when Han died, I was already all the way out here, but Leia and Chewie insisted on giving me the car. I’m not sure why though, it seems like it should belong to you.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t deserve it. Keep it, he would probably like for you to have it anyway.”

The grin that spreads across her face gives the sun a run for its money. “Really, you’re fine with that?”

“Yeah.” He nearly topples over when she throws her arms around his shoulders and captures in a hug. He’s stiff beneath her, and she quickly catches on, stumbling away from him and muttering apologies.

“Sorry, it’s just that you have no idea how happy you’ve made me.”

“My pleasure.” He gets up to leave, brushing dust from the back of his pants as the car groans at the loss of his body weighing it down.

“Wait!” She shouts after him, grabbing him by the arm before he can disappear around the corner. “I don’t know your name. I’m Rey.” He thinks the name quite suits her, this girl with the sunbeam smile and the freckles dusting her tanned skin.

“My name is Ben. Ben Solo.”

+++

He passes by the mechanic every day for weeks in hopes that he’ll run into Rey again, and by the third week, when he’s just about ready to give up, the Falcon pulls around the corner.

It was only by chance that they’d met in the first place. Her friend Poe worked at this shop, and she’d stopped by to see him that day when he first ran into her. He finds himself thinking that he’s unworthy of this stroke of luck.

He’s surprised to learn that she’s a mechanic like her friend, but she spends her spare time painting and singing whenever she can. She invites him over to see her painting one day, and he takes her up on the offer.

She paints the world in vivid colors, greens richer than evergreen forests and yellows more vibrant than the sun itself. She paints her spirit on a canvas, and it is beautiful.

He finds himself back at his desk again that night, with his kitchen sink mold-free and the door hinges decidedly unsqueaky and his laptop closed down for the night, and he thinks that perhaps, this is the perfect metaphor for his life at the moment.

He pulls out a clean sheet of paper, and decides that this will be the first letter which will not be crumpled up and thrown away.

 _Dear Mother_ , he writes, and with every word, Ben Solo begins again.


End file.
